


Doctor, Doctor, give me the news

by haljordont



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, technically also - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 12:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8979979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haljordont/pseuds/haljordont
Summary: In which Tommy works at the Thompkins free clinic and Bruce Wayne has some injuries.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whisperwar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperwar/gifts).



> First fic in... six months. Whoops.
> 
> All possible medical inaccuracies are my own and the Kinesio tape thing comes from my own treatment back when I played rugby.

Working at a clinic isn’t so bad. It’s almost calm, in a way. Repetitive. Gotham has no shortage of sick people.

Pays good too, not that Tommy needs it. His mother passing away had ensured the Elliot fortune was his, not that it was what it once was after almost three decades of caring for her. Still, something was better than nothing and Bruce Wayne funded the clinic all by himself, no Elliot interference needed.

Which begs the question of why a man who could take baths in hundred dollar bills was standing before him, clutching his left side tenderly, looking for all the world like a sheepish child. His smile is nice, at least, if a little bland. Not much beyond the surface.

“Mister Wayne,” Tommy sighs, snapping on nitrile gloves. “This is a _free_ clinic.”

“The family doctor is needed elsewhere.” Wayne replies, wincing every time he breathes. Tommy almost feels bad for him. Almost.

“Perhaps refrain from breaking ribs while he is away, then.”

A glance at the clock mounted above the doorway informs Tommy it is _far_ too late to be dealing with this. What Bruce Wayne is doing anywhere near the Thompkins Clinic at this time is anyone’s guess.

“Can you help me or not?” Wayne sighs, exhaustion seeping into the handsome lines of his face.

Tommy stares at the ceiling a moment, mouth open a fraction. He could very easily turn him away, Hippocrates be damned. Wayne would still fund the clinic, bleeding heart that he is. On the other hand, he does very much want to hear the story behind Wayne’s misfortune. “On the table, Mister Wayne.”

Wayne shuffles past him, further into the exam room, and Tommy watches him stare distrustfully at the blue padded table for a moment before heaving himself onto it with no amount of grace. He looks pale under the fluorescent lights, perhaps the pain or just the plain fact that he’s mostly spotted at late-night galas and parties he’s beginning to be too old to attend.  

Tommy rifles through a few drawers beside the man’s expensive shoes, pulling Kinesio tape and a prescription pad out to set them none-too-gently beside Wayne. Next is cloth scissors and it’s almost amusing watching the man’s eyes go wide, holding his ribs a little tighter. “For your shirt, Mister Wayne.”

“My-- My shirt?” Wayne looks between Tommy and then down at his button-up, shocked. “This is a Turnbull and Asser, Mister Elliot--”

“Doctor Elliot, to you.” Tommy snaps, fighting the urge to wave at the copious certificates hung on the wall behind him. He didn’t fight tooth-and-nail to go through medical school for _Bruce Wayne_ to tell him what to do. “Consider this payment for bothering me at this hour.”

He feels a little like a child, having a staring match with his patient for a long moment, Wayne narrowing his blue eyes. He supposes this is what he gets for allowing billionaire ditzes into his clinic. Leslie’s clinic, technically, but she’s not around at the moment, so it’s _Tommy’s_ and he should know better.

Finally, Wayne sighs, loosening his death grip on his three hundred dollar shirt. Tommy takes great pleasure in taking a pair of scissors to the expensive abomination, a teal item with maroon buttons and cufflinks with small, gray _bats_ on them. Tommy can’t help the snort that escapes him, ignoring the puzzled look Wayne gives him.

“Remind me why you had to cut my shirt?” Wayne asks, a small nervous laugh bubbling up. Tommy scowls.

Leslie can ask all she wants but Tommy doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to explain, professionally speaking, why a priceless shirt with _B.W_ helpfully stitched onto the tag is in tatters and buried under yesterday’s mountain of disposable coffee cups. He’s not even sure he’ll be able to explain it to himself. There’s just something a little bit _infuriating_ about Wayne.

Tommy takes a steadying breath. “I err on the side of caution. Unless you’d _like_ a punctured lung, I suggest you stop moving.” He snaps, holding Wayne’s wrist still when he attempts to curl an arm around his midsection again.

Ignoring the deep, jagged scars is easy. Tommy wants nothing to do with a man like Bruce Wayne, an airhead who injures himself. He doesn’t want to know about all the other trips he’s made to doctors and emergency rooms Ignoring _what_ they’re from is another matter entirely.

The amount of bullet wounds littering his abdomen alone is puzzling, a few more higher up, spread along his arms. Knife wounds, the messy kind, as if there was ever such a thing as _un-_ messy knife fights. A particularly distracting patch of burns along his collarbone, curling around the junction between shoulder and neck. Bruce Wayne seems to have beared every kind of injury possible, including a few broken noses as Tommy finds when he slides a piercing stare up at him.

Bruce Wayne has a well-known phobia of firearms. One of the few sports he hasn’t been spotted failing at with a dense smile is skeet shooting. Tommy finds he would pay good money to see him fail at that. Why he has three bullet grazes alone on the left side of his body is an important question. Too bad he has other, more pressing things to ask.

“Does this hurt?” Tommy asks, fingers probing the fourth and fifth ribs.

“Does what--” Tommy presses down sharply. “ _\--fuck you.”_

“I’ll take that as a yes, Mister Wayne.” He replies, slightly smug. “How did you receive this injury, Mister Wayne?”

“Water polo.”

Tommy doesn’t particularly enjoy being taken for a moron. The sincerity with which Wayne tells his lie is almost perfect. Except for the part where it sounds like a script, practiced and rehearsed and told time and again, and if Tommy were anyone else he’d pass over it without another word.

He feels like praying. He runs his hand steadily over each rib, poking and prodding, counting to ten in his head. “And why, pray tell, are your clothes not wet?”

“Well--”

“Better yet,” He adds, narrowing his eyes as he finds another soft spot, “why were you playing water polo in the middle of the night?”

_“Well--”_

“ _Better yet,_ ” Tommy interrupts, voice harder than before. “Why are you lying to me, Mister Wayne?”

“I am not!” Wayne sounds an awful lot like one of the addicts that shamble in every miserable day of Tommy’s tenure at his clinic and insist, swearing up and down on their parent’s graves, that they can quit at any moment. And then they ask if they could get painkillers for their bumps and scrapes. “You know how parties can be, Doctor Elliot--”

“No, I don’t.”

Wayne turns with him when he rises to grab the tape, continuing to babble amusingly. The ease with which he doesn’t miss a beat, always with some line ready, is almost applaudable. “Well, you see, there was a pair of _very_ welcoming blondes and next thing I know they’re beating me at water polo.”

Tommy makes a noncommittal noise. _That_ part, at least, he believes. Wayne may be well built with lots of time for the gym between swanning in and out of galas and board meetings but he doesn’t strike him as the best for strategy. Beating him in any field would be like fighting his way from a paper bag.

The only reason Wayne Enterprises hasn’t sunk is because of Lucius Fox and the poor men and women employed to talk Wayne out of funding a lingerie line. It’s not exactly a secret that Wayne isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Still, it’s evident that he is still some kind of tool.

Tommy works on taping up the ribs Wayne insists on lying about.

“I didn’t realize until I was on the way home that I’d injured myself. Must have been against the side of the pool. You know how it is, beautiful women can be very distracting.

Tommy breathes carefully between his teeth. “Again, no. I don’t.”

Wayne has a small moment of silence. A first for him, so far. When Tommy looks up at him, moving Wayne’s overly large bicep out of the way to finish taping his rib, he swears he can see actual cogs turning in Wayne’s mind. Rusted, clunky cogs.

“Well, I suppose I should stop lying then.” Wayne murmurs, meeting Tommy’s eyes. “It was two blond men. Very burly folks who pack a punch when they want a point.”

Tommy swears he could hit him.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Mister Wayne.”

Wayne sighs, relieved, and Tommy takes a moment to appreciate the grimace he makes as his chest shifts. “Can I get some painkillers?”

“Have you taken any substances recently, Mister Wayne?”

“Substances?” He asks, somehow playing dumber than before.

“Yes. Substances. Alcohol, cocaine, whatever it is they provide at those _parties_ of yours.” Tommy replies, borderline sharp.

“Oh!” Wayne gives him a sheepish look. “Only a few drinks, Mister Elliot. Nothing too wild.”

“As we’re still waiting on further licensing, the best I can give you is aspirin. I’m sure your personal doctor can prescribe something more suited to your needs at a later date.” He murmurs, scrawling a prescription down and handing the fun stuff to Wayne sharply. “And it is _Doctor_ Elliot.”

“Right.” Wayne nods sharply a few times, looking for all the world like one of the bobble-head dolls littering the receptionists' desk. “Is that everything?”

Tommy nods, mumbling under his breath, “Thankfully.”

He supposes it was worth it in the end. Wayne stumbling his way through a lie was amusing enough, and the cherry on the cake appears to be watching him attempt to slide off the table cautiously like a cat afraid to step into water. The injury is in his chest, not his foot, though expecting Wayne to know the difference was laughable.

“No rigorous exercise of any kind, sleep on your back. And for the love of God, no more _water polo._ I don’t want to see you back in here ever again.”

“I’ll try not to make it a habit. Anything else?” Wayne asks, seemingly unbothered by his lack of a shirt, rolling one shoulder experimentally. Tommy hates him.

“Keep coughing regularly to clear mucus. Hold a pillow to your chest if you need to.”

“What kind?”

Tommy freezes. Wayne can’t be that stupid. _He can’t._ “What do you mean?”

“Are we talking bed pillows or--"

“Get out of my clinic, Mister Wayne.”

* * *

“No.”

“Yes.”

“ _No._ ”

“I am not _asking._ ”

“And I am not treating _you._ ”

Tommy sips his coffee calmly. The clock above the man’s head, yet again, informs him it is _far_ too late to be dealing with this.

“It’s either you treat me or--” he grunts, leaning against the doorway heavily, “I die.”

He eyes the chunk of glass lodged in Batman’s side curiously. “There’s no legal proof you exist. I doubt I’d have police on my doorstep.”

“I _am_ someone under the cowl. Imagine what would happen if someone unmasked my body, retraced my steps and found _you_ were on duty.” He snaps, voice rough, and Tommy hears the unspoken accusation of _murder_ in every word. He doubts Batman’s ghost would come to exact vengeance on him.

“Some would say I’m doing Gotham a favor.”

“Many wouldn’t."

Tommy stares calmly at the man, getting the distinct feeling he’s part of a staring match despite being unable to see behind the lenses of the cowl. Eventually it becomes tedious, watching Batman wince and gasp in the doorway, so he sighs loudly, making his displeasure clear as he sets his coffee cup down.

He doesn’t offer a shoulder to lean on and Batman doesn’t make it apparent he needs one, aside from the shambling walk behind him, dripping blood on the freshly waxed floors. A gloved hand finds its way to the doorframe as Tommy unlocks the exam room, leaving fine scrapes in the plaster. Sharpened claws seemed a little like overkill but Tommy isn’t in the business of critiquing vigilantes.

“Get on the table. If you can.” He murmurs, letting Batman pass through first, broad shoulders slumped inwards protectively of his wound.

Batman grunts something close to gratitude as he pushes on toward the padded table in the corner of the room, gingerly pushing himself up onto it. Briefly, he’s reminded of Bruce Wayne toeing his way off the same table a few weeks earlier. The shard of glass embedded in his left side somehow also reminds him of the man and his implausible injuries.

“I was hoping Leslie was in.” Batman grumbles, as if he has any room to _grumble_. Tommy pushes him by the shoulder until he’s flat, humming quietly under his breath.

It’s not every day he gets something as exciting as _this,_ even if he does dislike treating patients who bring their injuries on themselves. “Leslie doesn’t work nights anymore.”

He never thought he’d see it but Batman looks _nervous,_ grim mouth thinning into a tight line _._ Some distant part of his mind asks _why_ until he remembers the less he knows, the better. Tommy piles gauze, disinfectant, and a handful of other items on the table between Batman’s splayed legs.

“You’ll be fine.” Tommy offers up, just shy of _soft._ And here he thought Wayne was the one with a bleeding heart.

“I’ve had worse.”

Tommy slaps thread down beside the rest with a little more force than necessary.

Batman looks close to vulnerable under his hands.

He snaps on a pair of nitrile gloves, shoves a procedure mask over his mouth, grits his teeth and warns, “Try not to bite your tongue off.”

Batman shouts, cutting off into a deep growl, fighting to rise up with the shard of glass when Tommy yanks it out determinedly. A moment later, still clenching his teeth, he brings his arm around to his side, hitting some unseen latch and rips the midriff of extra armour from his costume, chestplate going with it. At least he knows what he’s doing.

If Tommy were a man of technology rather than medicine, he’d most likely be fascinated by the whole get-up. As it is, he’s more focused on the sluggishly bleeding wound, pushing the undershirt plastered to Batman’s abdomen away. Wayne’s nice in that area, Batman’s _better_. Under all the blood, at least.

He slaps gauze onto the wound, forcing Batman flat against the table again with a good dose of pressure, listening to the man heave in breaths hungrily. “How long did you have this inside you?” Tommy asks, tilting his head in the direction of the glass lying against Batman’s thigh.

“About five minutes.”

“Five minutes.”

Batman grunts when Tommy forces more pressure on his wound, more blood spilling from the edges of the gauze. “I was across the street when it happened.”

“You’re not going into shock.” He comments.

“I’ve had worse.” Batman repeats.

“Good for you.” Tommy snaps, gritting his teeth. Maybe he’s putting a little too much pressure on Batman’s wound. Maybe he deserves it. He growls through his teeth, eyes fixed on the scars along the vigilante’s torso, “I told you not to come back here, Mister Wayne.”

The sound of Batman’s mouth clicking shut is music to his ears.

* * *

Tommy’s never had much of a good bedside manner. For a decade, he hadn’t particularly needed it. Most of his patients had been unconscious on an operating table with their brains under his knife. They didn’t exactly have much room to be grumbling and griping.

Working in a clinic where the patients would just as quickly rifle through his pockets as shake his hand hadn’t helped.

Batman is _neither._

Tommy sighs for the hundredth time in as many minutes. An hour and a half seems to have been long enough for Batman to regain some of his energy and lock his obvious discomfort at the whole situation away for a later date.

“I am going back out there, Doctor Elliot.”

Tommy hums absently, standing over where his patient glares a hole through his head. He prods at the freshly treated wound. “No,” Tommy’s mouth tips up at the corner when Batman hisses through his teeth. “You are not.”

“I’m not _asking._ ”

“This again?”

Bruce Wayne, alone, is a numbing experience. His smiles are empty and his donations to anyone who asks are going to bankrupt him one day. Big heart, little brain. Tommy wants nothing to do with him.

Batman, it seems, is the very opposite. Too much smarts for a man with little emotional capacity. A rogue who gets his kicks beating on those unfortunate enough to run into him. How _original._ Tommy wants less to do with him than he does Bruce Wayne.

Put the two together, somehow fit the ruthless efficiency of a creature like Batman into a man who can barely tie his own shoelaces and suddenly Tommy finds himself interested.

Wayne sighs, head thunking noisily back onto the table. It’s almost amusing, how close to a petulant child he looks. “Why, exactly, are you keeping me here?”

“I didn’t patch you up only to have you return an hour later with a new injury.

“Careful,” Batman warns, head tilting slightly in his direction, “That almost sounded like _compassion._ ”

“I am a doctor.”

Wayne snorts. “You’re not _that_ kind of doctor.”

Tommy pokes him again. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You’re good at what you do. You’re just not particularly… friendly.”

Rather than insist he can, indeed, be _friendly,_ Tommy pokes him again. Batman barely winces. “Why does the man dressed as a bat think he has any room to talk?”

“What else am I supposed to do? I am being kept here against my will.” Definitely a petulant child.

Batman may be interesting but he’s still infuriating. Tommy breathes in deep, pats the man’s wound with a dry smile and says, “Well, then, you’re free to go if you’d like. Don’t come back here ever again, Mister Wayne.”

* * *

The sun rises at 5:45 A.M. About four minutes before that, Batman finally shuffles from the exam room Tommy had left him to. Halfway through _Gamma_ in _Aristotle's Metaphysics_ , the words imprinted on his brain at this point, Tommy only nods when Batman offers a gruff, “Thank you.”

* * *

So maybe he’s got a lot of questions. Maybe he wants to see the in-between of Bruce Wayne and Batman. Maybe he wants to see under even that. Maybe, just maybe, he wishes he had been a little more _friendly_.

It’s not exactly foolish, more impractical. There’s no room for cowls and capes in his life and he’s got enough three-piece suits to wear already. There’s no room for Wayne in his life. 

Still, he thinks of asking Leslie for a few more night shifts anyway.

Before he can embarrass himself over curiosity, luckily, the world rights itself and Tommy Elliot is reminded of why it’s a bad idea to go chasing down his own patients.

“I may, or may not, have dislocated two fingers at once.”

He’s going to fire the receptionist. It’s not within his rights but he’ll find a way. Letting Wayne into his exam room was a criminal offense. She’d listened to him seethe over the man enough times to know. Describing it as _cute_ hadn’t helped, either.

Tommy drags the man inside by his arm, slamming the door behind him, pleased that at least Batman had allowed him to do it. He’s not idiotic, he knows the man could have _very_ easily stopped him if he’d liked. Hesitant to use force on those who don’t pose a threat, perhaps. Or he’s just as dumb as Tommy originally thought him to be.

Tommy considers that for a moment, nose brushing the door as he breathes heavily.

“I really did dislocate my fingers.” Wayne offers innocently, indifferent to Tommy fuming against the door.

“What the _fu--_ ”

“Careful. Wouldn’t want anyone asking questions, now would you?”

Oh, he hates him. He hates him and he’s going to quit and he’s going to move back to Philadelphia and cut people’s brains open and think of Bruce Wayne’s smug, insufferable, handsome face the whole time.

“What,” He snaps, punctuating each word by digging his fingers deeper into the muscle of Wayne’s bicep, “Are you doing here?”

“I told you--”

“You’re the Goddamn Batman.” He hisses, quieter than his previous outburst. “I’m sure you can figure out how to fix your Goddamn hands.”

A beat of silence.

“I wanted to see you.”

He’s going to punch him. He’s going to punch him until he stops saying such _moronic_ things. He’s going to punch him and never stop. He’s going to--

" _Why?_ ” He’s going to punch himself, first. Then Wayne.

He doesn’t turn to look and instead hears Wayne swallow thickly. A moment later he grinds out, “Few people know both sides.”

He shouldn’t laugh. That fact doesn’t stop him in the slightest though, forehead clunking against the door as he laughs breathlessly, fingers loosening their grip on Wayne’s sweater. It’s cruel, to laugh, laugh like _this_ but he figures Batman deserves it. Maybe he’ll learn.

Big heart, big brain. Tommy wants to pick both apart until he knows it all. Even this, Wayne’s stone cold expression slapped over hurt. For such an imposing man, he looks _young_ when he’s lonely, somehow smaller the more he opens up, spilling his guts all over Tommy’s examination room.

He breathes in, biting back the last dregs of laughter, eyes watering a little as he looks up at Wayne. When he straightens eventually, he finds himself looking down at the man instead, ever so slightly. “Thank you. That was good.” He sighs.

“It wasn’t intended to be funny, Tommy.”

“ _Don’t._ ” He warns, amusement run out, leaning into the man's space ever so slightly. “We are not friends.”

“I don’t do friends.” Wayne replies smoothly, almost offended in tone. “Now will you fix my hand or not?”

It doesn’t take long to tape his fingers together, though Tommy does spend a good while rummaging through the same cabinet looking for something he’d already found, Wayne waiting patiently by the examination table. Eventually, he gives up stalling, teeth grit when he rises and turns on his heel sharply, scrawling on the prescription pad in his hand.

“I meant what I said. I never want to see you here again. Stay away from this clinic, Mister Wayne.”

Wayne tilts his head when Tommy turns the page over, clicking his pen with finality before he hands it to him, adding, “Our licensing still hasn’t come through.”

“I’ll get on it.” He murmurs in reply, slipping the paper into his pocket. “Thank you for your assistance, Doctor Elliot.”

Tommy makes a gruff noise as he leads the other man to the door, opening the door wide to let him pass through. Wayne doesn’t hesitate in making his escape, which is nice, but he does pause when Tommy adds, quietly, “I’d keep a note of the information of the back before you hand it over to the pharmacist if I were you. Perhaps add it to your phone.”

Wayne looks - God forbid he ever says so aloud - adorable when his eyebrows raise, genuinely surprised. “Doctor’s orders?”

“Doctor’s orders.” Tommy nods, the corner of his mouth tipping up.

If his fascination with Wayne ended badly, maybe he could change his phone number. Move back to Philadelphia, become a surgeon again. Until then, he’s content to keep Wayne far away from his workplace and pick his brain on the weekends.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments keep me going and you can find me [@tommyellict](http://tommyellict.tumblr.com/)


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